Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the independent report entitled Independent review of children's social care: final report, published on 23 May 2022, how much of the recommended new spending of £2.6 billion has been allocated to date.

This government is driving the biggest transformation of children’s social care in a generation. Long-term investment is essential to shift the system away from high-cost crisis responses towards earlier support.

In 2025/26, the department more than doubled direct investment in children’s social care prevention services through the Children’s Social Care Prevention Grant. Now we are going even further to reform children’s social care. We are continuing the £523 million available for the Families First Partnership programme in 2025/26 for each year of the Local Government Finance Settlement to 2028/29. We have invested a further £300 million over two years (2026/27 and 2027/28) from the Transformation Fund announced at the Spending Review, and £547 million of new funding announced in the Local Government Funding Policy Statement, meaning £2.4 billion over three years, all ringfenced for prevention and de-escalation. Together this will help to reduce reliance on costly acute services, strengthen earlier intervention and drive forward reforms to children’s social care.

We are also investing £560 million capital funding to refurbish and expand children’s homes and provide more high-quality foster care placements.

Additional funding beyond 2027/28 is subject to the next Spending Review.